The Royal Dynasties in Ancient Israel: A Study on the Formation and Development of Royal-Dynastic Ideology

Description

The concept of charismatic leadership was introduced into the study of Israelite history by Max Weber. The most influential application of this concept to Israelite history was by Albrecht Alt, but in Alt's view 'charismatic leadership... allowed no institutional consolidation, and... could not be transferred... or inherited...'. Thus charismatic leadership and the dynastic principle were mutually exclusive. Alt's reading of the sources led him to the conclusion that the Israelite monarchy was originally charismatic, and therefore non-dynastic. The hereditary monarchy which developed especially in Judah was a deviation from genuine Israelite tradition, and the dynastic instability of the northern kingdom was due to the stronger hold of the genuine tradition there.Ishida's study, essentially his Hebrew University dissertation of 1974, is a critical synthesis of scholarly discussion of this question and related subjects. Ishida conceives the issue in broad terms, examining numerous aspects of the formation and development of monarchic institutions and ideology in Israel and searching them for information pertinent to the debate. A sampling of the topics covered apropos of the main issue includes a fine literary-historical analysis of the sources in Samuel and studies of the covenants between David and YHWH and David and Israel, the population of the City of David, and the roles of the Ark, the Temple, the ˁam hāˀāreṣ and the Queen Mother. Even when the author endorses a current view on these topics, he presses further to discover their implications for the present study.